by Olga Rudenko and Jennifer Collins, Special for USA TODAY

by Olga Rudenko and Jennifer Collins, Special for USA TODAY

KIEV, Ukraine - Vyacheslav Veremiy was on his way home from a shift at the Ukrainian daily newspaper Vesti in the early hours Wednesday when he was dragged from his taxi by a group of armed men and shot in the chest.

The taxi driver and another passenger were severely beaten in the attack, which took place in one of Kiev's central streets next to the city's main police station. Veremiy died a few hours later.

Friends and colleagues of Veremiy say they believe that the killers are among the hundreds of government-hired thugs paid to crack down on anti-government protesters. On Wednesday, the government and protesters called a truce to try and work out their differences in talks.

Amnesty International and other human rights groups as well as opposition leaders say these armed men have been roaming Kiev in organized groups equipped with bats and other makeshift weapons. And this week, they are using guns, they say.

"We are seeing them everywhere at the moment - in parts of Kiev and in different Ukrainian cities - there are large numbers of them," says Heather McGill, a researcher for the Europe and Central Asia Regional Program at Amnesty International.

McGill says it is hard to know the exact number of hired thugs - or "titushki" as they are known in the Ukraine - and the nature of their ties to government and law enforcement.

"It's very difficult to say what the link is, but we have seen interviews with titushki where they admitted they were being paid - there is definitely a body of young, athletic men being paid by the government," McGill says.

Law enforcement officers have also admitted working with the titushki, McGill adds.

The thugs can be found in all areas where protests are taking place, not just in Kiev. Human rights workers and analysts say that these titushki clashed with protesters in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhya in January. The Ukraine government has refused journalist requests asking for a response to the accusations.

The Kyiv Post reported that activists have been trying to get people to photograph and video the thugs smashing cars and attacking people because they worry that the attacks may be blamed on anti-government protesters. Videos of the titushki in action have appeared on YouTube.

Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine expert at the Chatham House think tank in London, says the stepping up of thug activity is a big reason why protesters fought back against police Tuesday in one of the bloodiest nights in Ukraine's post-independence history.

"On Tuesday, there were even thugs that the government has hired who have been roaming the streets, threatening civilians and shooting journalists in cars," she says, citing media reports. "Then they started throwing stones at the protesters and in a way that started the violence. So this particular escalation has been driven specifically by the government."

McGill says there's long been a tradition of paying people to take part in demonstrations in the Ukraine.

"That's why it was no surprise that when the protest erupted in November, there was a parallel pro-government protest taking place and a lot of those people admitted to having been paid to take part in that protest," she says.

Anti-government protesters say the thugs are often difficult to distinguish from their own kind. Sergey Usachenko was among protesters who defended Independence Square from 200 hired thugs as police attacked from another side Tuesday.

"The problem is, they are dressed like EuroMaidan self-defense troops, sometimes they shout 'Glory to Ukraine!' but they all have white ribbons tied on their hands, and they have firearms," he said, referring to the name of the protest movement.

"And they don't hesitate to use them. Yesterday they were shooting people, throwing stun grenades at the cars that were passing by, pulling people out of the cars and beating them."

"I helped carry a man who was shot three times," he says.

Taras Berezovets, political analyst and head of Berta Communications in Kiev, says the thugs are being hired mainly to scare people away from the protests. But protesters remain defiant despite the intimidation.

"I'm frightened by them, as I would be frightened by any other armed people with limited ability to think," Anna Lyubunya, 28, a protester from Kiev, says of the paid thugs that roamed the streets of central Kiev on Tuesday night. "I'm scared of everything that is going on in the country today but I don't think that it means I should stay home."